Casual raid (10) - Lineup question

Hey there!

After beating LFR over and over, my girlfriend wants to experience some kind of real raid. I usually raid 25 man and I don't know much about leading a raid or even organising it, but I will give it a try. Buffs, debuffs and ofc optimal lineups change every expansion and since did not need to know, I do not know anymore what an ideal raid lineup looks like.

This is what it looks like atm:

Tanks
Guardian Druid
Protpala

Melee
Arms Warrior
Subtlety Rogue
Enhancement Shaman

Range
Arcane Mage
Beastmaster Hunter
Shadow Priest

Heal

Restoration Shaman
...

I really wanted a shadow priest in my lineup, since the Tranquility gained by shadow priests through symbiosis seems to be quite handy. However, if I have no choice/If I'm overrating Tranquility, I could make him heal, too.

Now finally to the question: What kind of second healer shall I choose? I remember restoshamans being group healers and healpalas tank healers...but that's from years ago
Or should I make my priest heal? In that case, which Range should I choose? Thx in advance

Sp tranq is basically useless (he'll do more healing spamming flash heal than tranqing). As the second healer I'd get either a holy paladin or a disc priest (both add more utility than the other healers, which is important in a 10 man setup). If you respec the priest any range dps could do the job, but the optimal choice would be warlock (your hunter can supply the spell haste buff), simply because they are the strongest dps in the game atm.

thought about warlock, too. summoning is handy (^.^) and health stone can help through one wave of blade rain (mel'jarak) or garalon stomp
but since we start from the scratch, gearing is very important. And having three cloth guys just does not feel good.

thought about warlock, too. summoning is handy (^.^) and health stone can help through one wave of blade rain (mel'jarak) or garalon stomp
but since we start from the scratch, gearing is very important. And having three cloth guys just does not feel good.

Doesn't really matter if you have 3 cloth guys, since every cloth piece with spirit on will go for the priest and a big part of the gear is the tier tokens anyway which your group is balanced fine with (4 warrior/hunter/shaman/monk, 3 druid/death knight/mage/rogue and 2 pala/priest/warlock)
So adding a warlock seem fine to bump that group of tokens to 3 players.

If you want your priest to stay shadow get a pala/priest healer or even druid.
You seem to lack combat ress which can be handy at times (i know you have druid tank, but from my experience it doesn't work good - have to switch out of bear form while boss/add smack you in the phase in some situations and what if its him who die?)
It might just be me cause im used to alot of combat ressers. We have 2 dk's, 3 druids and 1 warlock, but we also have a 12 player rooster in our guild.

A casual raid, almost by definition, doesn't really need to worry about balance. Just run it with people you enjoy playing the game with. As long as you have the requisite number of tanks, healers, and dps you should be okay. The only thing you might want to be conscious of is number of ranged and melee dps, but even that might not be too big of a deal.

Weaknesses:
-Weak single target longevity (great at getting a tank up from low health but will go OOM faster than most healers with sustained single target spam)
-Weak AoE output on fights that don't allow Healing Rain to be used to full effectiveness (Glyphed Riptide helps a bit but still weaker than other healers)
-Relatively weak mobility - very tethered to cast time spells
-Only healing spec without any real tank CD

If you have a choice, I would rule out Mistweavers (have a very weak tank CD and you want a stronger one on some fights) and Holy Paladins (share Shaman weakness with mobility, and also have fairly weak AoE healing). A Shaman/Paladin combo is likely to have problems on spread AoE/high mobility fights. Both Disc Priests and Resto Druids complement the Shaman skillset very nicely.

Shaman - weak with mobility? What are you smoking? They are some of the strongest healers to heal on the move. Between Spiritwalker's Grace and Healing Tide Totem, Healing Stream Totem with Totemic Projection, Shamans are pretty sick at healing on the move.

Holy Paladins complement Shamans very nicely with their mastery absorbs and lots of raid utility in addition to ensuring that Intellect Plate drops do not go to waste. But of course, as mentioned by previous posters, if you're just playing casually, just get any healer who likes to heal and is not too bad at it.

Be sure you have:
- 2 tanks, 3 healers, 5 dps.
- A tank who have a dps spec.
- A healer who have a dps spec.
And you're good to go.

Originally Posted by ArcaneFrostFire

Melee
Arms Warrior

Arms warrior are bad and Blizzard should feel bad. (May change when 5.2 is released.)
Take a Fury Warrior, and be sure you have someone to give him the crit buff.
And give him some loot. And some love. You should be nice with warriors.

Dps classes able to multidot (Spriest, Afflilock, Balance druid) are really convenient on some fights, don't be afraid to have many of them.
Try to have the eight rai buff (with the comp you proposed you should have them.)

And as many people have already said, if it's casual raiding, bring people you enjoy playing with. You can progress in current raid tier with many different comp and there's really few things mandatory.

Edit: The less melee dps you'll have, the happier you'll be.
The current tier is not too painful as a melee dps, but still, having three melee dps can really be annoying on some fights.